they have that open field to realize their dreams. please know we will remain open for business. with it will save an awful lot in taxes if you bring your investment of florida. unfortunately i just can't think everyone. despite the media might stay. you can see the rest of this online. you can watch all of the victory in concession speech is it from the midterm election. this is hosted by the national journal.

>> i'm certainly on a little bit of sleep i'm sure all of you are as well. more importantly, what these results may tell us for 2019 and 2020. some housekeeping items. you will see microphones in the middle aisle. we will have question and answer after charlie's remarks. if you have a question please walk to the microphone. state your name and organization. and then you can ask your question. for those of participating in social media we do have a hashtag. we will start our program. he's can walk us through a

presentation on the candidates who one that will be new to washington and utah newton governor seat. good afternoon. thank you so much for having me. it's always such a honor to speak. it is always a little bit awkward to have to open for charlie cook. he is just an incredible icon and i'm so privileged to be able to work with him. and more importantly i think for all of us we are dealing with trained and understand what's going on. and then data driven and the analyst driven dispassionate careful analysis that charlie brings to the table let me tell you a little bit about what we do. and how we approach this race. first of all, we did not

approach this as a horse race. we did not do that day-to-day tracking of poles and statements. the way that we approach this was to think and said about the networks of influence around the most competitive races. we're talking about who are their friends, their family, who are their colleagues or their top donors. when we are thinking about a senior policymaker how do they make decisions based on the people around them. we started about six months ago and we picked some of the most incredible races. at the end of the day we covered seven senate races. i feel a sigh of relief. we are good. we've all of the new senators that had one.

we had covered for key gubernatorial races as well. when we started out to do this work we do a couple of main propositions. the insight you need to be able to understand. how do you build relationships with people you may not had known before. that was the approach we took on this. in terms of our analytic team. the biggest one was. there is a lot of indications of this. our knowledge is pretty inclusively. it's much more complicated than that. a lot of interesting tensions

play out. i will walk through a pretty abbreviated version of our slides. if you miss all of these are there. let's start right out of the gate. with the first one that was called in the night. it was the least surprising. going back to the frame of how much this is become. he came out and supported president trump extremely early on in the campaign. they were cut away to control that.

in the big-time energy donors. that had supported president trump in his campaign. we have related a couple those out there. harold hamm no stranger i think most of the folks in the room. but a major oklahoma energy baron who actually went to kevin kramer and said i want you to run on this race. he said if you run in this race. i will actually cheer the finance mindy. they are extremely close to him. they came to bear for kevin kramer. and actually brought quite a bit of money in this campaign. he actually tapped in to the local energy interests. kelsey warren who is the have of the company that runs the dakota access pipeline. again part of that kind of held him. he has some really strong ties in the conservative media.

they were major investors on a company back in deacon media. it primarily serves oil workers in the oil fields. the have the chief of staff. they bring that type of expertise. the real allele see. they have actually come in with a little bit of fire.

they verily very sadly lost their son. a little bit on the different side. in the which we see influence. in the senate races we have more infidelity here because there is more requirements for disclosure we have given you some information about their campaign finance. so starting on the left we've laid out the independent expenditures. it is the in-state verses versus out-of-state funding. as you might expect.

we see 81 percent of his funding coming from out of state. let's move on to the next slide. we have actually laid out and mapped out the network around kevin kramer and this is a kind of data that are analyst are pouring over to try to figure out where should you really focus your efforts. some of his colleagues from the conservative media area and the whole kind of bottom quadrant there. i can be really powerful. that is a bit of an eye chart for you all. let's talk about mike brown. another one that i say not a huge surprise given that in some sense joe donnelly was the accidental senator.

he is a relative political newcomer. the biggest event was the ten years he spent on the jasper indiana school board. he spent four years in the indiana house. and during that time he actually developed a really close relationship in a group of individuals who are very focused on good fiscal policy. and good relations. mike pence is very much involved in it. it's a major area of focus. the broader theme of workforce development. the ability to in packed that.

they outsource a real political hot button issue in indiana. he is made most of his money and the company called myron distributing. focus on auto parts. i will talk about that a little bit more. in many cases are some of the business of mega- donors and those strong he felt. at the national level i think it's a little bit of a question mark.

he has shown a lot of support from washington. their relationship has been rocky at times. his brother actually served in mike pence administration. but he is not close with that brother. one of the closest friends. who was also the founder behind no labels. looking a little bit at the expenditures here. one thing i will focus on is that in the independent expenditures. it has focused very heavily.

he is still able to do this. in a number of commentators he has found the use of that. i think when we start to look at some of the numbers on this it will be interesting to see if they have any sort of balance with it. the in-state out-of-state funding. it is due to that reason. josh holly. fascinating guy. they had noted already she has one for public office. the next great hope.

one thing he has been pretty successful about is that he has really turn this into a big tent race. from the business community. the sky is across the board. a really deep and impressive resume. also noted a legal scholar. they came out in force. raising money for this campaign. the types of people he continues to work with. they are really intellectual. and the big tech challengers. interesting one of the things that a lot of this is the real

prominence of the attorney general and taking some pretty active roles mostly in opposing the claim agenda of the obama administration. he has been pretty adamant in going after facebook and google. something i think we need to keep a real eye on that this could be something that is really a leader of the tech movement. one of the biggest donors was $300,000. he didn't make too much of it. something really to watch there. he has deep ties and the religious freedom. they term as anti- they term

as anti- the former executive director. it's been at the forefront of a lot of these fights. he was involved in the hobby lobby case. when we did our analysis missouri was hand down the most funded race since most of the independent expenditure funding is actually focused on undercutting the opponent it is just a huge race. as americans for prosperity. you see the conservative funding source. when you go into the in-state versus out-of-state. it comes out with a massive amount of funding.

it is just for his campaign. it doesn't roll into all of the independent expenditures. it was a huge disparity. rick scott maybe one of the real players that we would've would expected to win last night. going against a lackluster opponent. it is the conservative it place in florida. he got his start as a healthcare executive. he has actually raise a lot raised a lot of money in texas. he draws very conventional on

mainstream campaign advisors. you can see those facts there. a few others along the way. and when you look at how he has kind of balanced this. he has the deep ties a lot of it goes through. he has actually inherited a lot of the trump ground game. it was very active and pivotable. looking to some of his independent expenditures. it is almost entirely dedicated to promoting his candidate see. 89 percent of his funding his state versus out-of-state.

in one of the great hopes for democrats marsha blackburn. a pretty resounding victory. and one thing that has been noted quite a bit. when you look at some of the other players in her inner circle. you could actually make a better place --dash my case. if you look at some of the individuals who work in her office and supported her as a close personal relationship. in some of the other members of the republican committee. when you look at her industry ties it's really pretty astonishing. it's almost exclusively in the telecom and broadcasting space. the more recent addition to the staff was one of those. also a lot of ties to the

sec. a lot of ties in funding from at&t and facts. something to keep an eye out for. when you look at her personal networks she has some interesting personal ties in the health space. her husband is a sales consultant. some interesting business ties in tennessee as well. a pretty broad range of funding for her. about 56 percent of the state. one thing i would watch for with the marsha blackburn in because she has those ties to the telecom and broadcasting is the possibility that she and josh holly team up on a number of initiatives particularly those that might go after big tech that might be supported of the telecom industry.

not quite what we had expected going in. i think we will leave it to charlie to talk about the details of that. her networks are actually compared to some of the other players that we profiled fairly modest. she came to politics pretty late in life. as you might expect she's actually inherited that. she does have some very deep highs. the former president of the synagogue. they are actually a major leader in the jewish community.

it comes at the policy issues. her husband is a radiologist with the va. she has personally as i mentioned before been a software consultant and worked for southwest gas corporation. if you look at some of her independent expenditures. the most interesting thing for her in terms of funding. in this particular case and that's exactly what happened. i think they dedicated something by $2 million. tremendous amount of support.

we will see how long it goes. fascinated about her. she likes some of the republican candidates. as well as the support for more traditional elements of the coalition. and when we look at her. the major player in arizona. karl rove. who is needs no introduction for this room. pretty fervent and his anti- trump proclamations.

when you look at her networks on the ground and you think this is actually striking. she does not have the well developed long-standing arizona network that you might see from some of the other candidates. when you look at what she's inherited. she is inherited a lot of the network. worked very closely in the past with john mccain, stephen shattuck previously worked for john mccain. and finally, its military in defense. no surprise given her a decorated history. a lot of ties in the interests.

this is where we see some moderation and some points of view. she was famous for actually suing the department of defense. have brought her in contact with a lot of those that were fighting for greater degrees of equality she is also a big advocate for mental health. for the time in elected office she served at the george marshall center. you can really see her fitting into the mold that mccain left. also a intellectual. not much to say about her. let's talked about christiansen mena she started

as a really pretty far left progressive. her first campaign for office was in the green party. she came back a couple years later. and ended up finding her way in public office. she has risen from there. she has been so pro-business. she has done a ton to embrace herself. actually received the endorsement. she received the spirit of enterprise award. she has hired several staffers. and sitting in line with that same kind of narrative. she has been a real champion for veterans issues. one of them in the marine corps and another one current still active duty. she is a really staunch advocate for lgbt rights.

they had three former staffers who are over there. when you look at some of her expenditures and the broader campaign finance things. first she obviously has been a beneficiary of ton of out-of-state funding. is the mysterious shadow group. they had have in their hand quite a bit through various clever approaches. it's hard to tell who is behind them. >> i think i'm going to end on desantis.

of all the races that they covered. if you look purely at the networks. it is the one i feel most comfortable with. they actually align themselves with all of those candidates. that is exactly what was happening. when you look at some of the funding networks. massive support from george soros. is a real equal counterweight for that. his support came very heavily. as the members of mara lago. but also the finance committee that votes with virtually everyone every one of them. so really tapping into those networks that the president has built around himself. some really strong and interesting ties.

we see them as having quite a few ties to industry. most of what we've seen with the terms of relationships around him. our people who come from places like heritage action. those are the kinds of people he surrounds himself with. his running mate for the office jeanette nunez. perhaps drawing on rick stock -- scott's network. he's done pretty well with the business community. in particular the medical community in florida. if you want to chat with me afterwards.

and getting yourself in the best position for the organizations you represent. we were here to help you however you can. [applause]. think you look. i always find luke's analysis to be very interesting. but then you go insane what do i do with all of this. we are happy to be there with you through it all. i know this is who you all came to see. i won't do charlie's by about one thing i will mention is that just to say congratulations this is his 20th year with national journal. we look forward to the analysis that he will bring today.

>> thank you very much. that was really good. i'm extremely impressed. this is kevin, and he mentioned that this is my 20th year at national journal but what that really means is that this is the tent by annual charlie cook sleep deprivation tests. we were several members of our team where on the decision desk at nbc which is kind of interesting because think about nasa mission control. it was great fun. my wife is in the back. she think some crazy. we are going from here to the

birch near to see mirror to see petunia clark. the younger ones just google her. anyway, i'm not sleep deprived at all. coming on the heels of the most surprising a presidential elections this one had relatively few surprises. it flowed more or less. it was like they were having two different elections. in the u.s. senate was u.s. senate was can be held in one america. and everything else was can be over in a purple and with assemblies mixed in.

with conservative read straight states. that can append out a lot. our friends at nbc at first to read this morning made a really good point that if you look at the state exit poll. with where his job approval rating as. republicans did pretty well. and really well. in fact. and to the extent that they were below 50. not so well.

in the senate in i know luke is artie gone through this. we should probably skip to really quickly. then they lost dean heller and we are still kind of waiting to hear about arizona, florida in montana. i was really interested in luke's analysis. he sort of touched on this. what i thought was so interesting there, was that martha mcnally did really start off as a moderate.

at that it was just the winter primary. and then she kind of kept going. i thought it kind of interesting. they were moving into the middle. this is kind of interesting i have actually. and members of her team have met with martha mcnally. i think that she is going to be a u.s. senator. will she win this race or is she going to get appointed to replace john kyle when he is expected to step down. that is likely to happen. florida, it looks really likely that it's gonna win. the scenario that was either

nightmarish or delicious. if they have picked up one seat. with an overtime game in mississippi. that is not the case. depending on what happens. you can still see that they go all the way up to the net gain of four. just incredible win for them. it wore the other direction down. we will see how that in the outcome that we are expecting. this was a very good one. in the senate for republicans. and one yes, they were blessed with the best map that either party have but they took full advantage of it i you have to

give about because this was certainly a challenging environment in the house some of us have a little bit of shock early in the evening because in the earlier hours when we started getting returns in. they would probably clear the 23 seats they needed to get the majority. they seem to be on a much lower trajectory than we thought. this will be interesting. it seems to be headed towards that. and since california takes their time and counting votes it will be a while before we know a whole lot more about that. i think the shocker, and i was

not here for all of luke's presentation but did you go into oklahoma five, and people would ask always. where's the surprise. >> there always is one but i will confess that the fifth district of oklahoma wasn't really where we were looking. this is where steve russell who is in his the career as the army officer. before that. it's basically oklahoma city and the suburbs immediately around oklahoma city. and it's actually oklahoma. but it has a 41% minority or mixed race population there it

is the state capitol and. it is not just your typical southern kind of district. but wow. this was a meeting. she was an attorney. and this is a district that mitt romney beat president obama by 18 points. trump beat hillary by 13 points there. there is can be a race that surprises you. the underperforming early in the evening. we have our had scratching. the governors it was a good night for democrats. and there are three races that are uncalled.

the independent was running. and then he dropped down. but that's very close. the others other is the open seat in connecticut. and then finally, the georgia in the question is does it go for a runoff run off on december 4 in it is a close call i know the abrams campaign we were on a conference call with her folks over the weekend, and they were really trying to win without a runoff. they thought was plausible. the libertarian was not getting anything. i don't think it was overconfident. i think they have considerable doubt about what would be like in a really short up along the

state. when you have some really quirky things there like monday is a holiday and all of the court houses in the state are going to be closed, and early voting would be very much abbreviated there were all kinds of wrinkles in there. they were having a hard time getting information out of that. with some of the county court houses. this is something where winning the runoff would be pretty tough. it was tough. this would apply both to the georgia governor's race in the florida governor's race. we can actually do that. a lot of people in the democratic party are very disappointed with florida and

the georgia governors races. it was more white liberal national. yeah, the left came up short. compared to what we kind of thought three or four or five months ago. in gillam's case made into were run as well as they did. just to use george as an example. they have changed a lot. they have to have changed a lot or they would not have seen this race this close. it is changing. it will continue to change. but maybe not quite fast enough. it is becoming a less red republican state.

this can of punctuated that. in the and the same thing with texas. one thing that's interesting about texas is that they come up short. this was the first serious influx of money into voter registration to get out the vote for democrats in texas. this will move democrats forward in their goal to turn texas purple. this was a lot better than i expected. that was a very hard fault win. you are republican income in texas. you can have a expectation that you will help spend it by a pretty wide margin.

it was an impressive win for him. where they underperform we knew that the senate was can be really tough for them. where they had mixed to slightly disappointed in the state legislatures. i had been emphasizing this for a month or two. if you think about this from a policy standpoint. if they were gonna get the majority in the house that they now had. it would not be a huge majority. it would be small almost certainly. i will be a really small majority.

what were really talking about has been able to control the senate floor schedule. not really moving a lot of serious policy along the way. and now certain that republicans were to have a majority. they were so good to be at the other end of the avenue. from a policy perspective there wasn't really much of a prospect for a change. for me it was out in the states. everybody in this room knows, over the last 20 or 30 years washington has been increasingly able or unwilling to deal with a lot of problems. facing the country. and as a result it has created a vacuum.

you throw in the big gains in the 2010 election when they picked up six governorships. and over state legislative seats. and where you saw conservatives embark on a very aggressive agenda. a lot of this some the most controversial measures. as been passing on the constitutionality of statutes and regulations and policies enacted by the states that now had republican majorities in the legislature. that has sorta been what is driving a lot of the controversy in the supreme court depending on your point

of view. a very aggressive and now with democrats picking up. seven or something governorships in the state legislatures. they dropped a net loss of five chambers either statehouse or state senate chambers. democrats picked up six. you have the governorship, the house and the senate republicans have before the election they had 25 states where they had complete control versus only eight for democrats.

they picked up six. we sought republicans picking up who is the election expert. the minnesota house. >> i'm sorry in the colorado the colorado and maine state senates. it's where it gets complicated. they are aligned with aligned with some republicans. and the effectively gave republicans control of the senate. the opposite way.

this was in the midterm elections since the beginning of the 20th century. the average loss for chambers for a president's party was 12. and this looks like it's gonna be about six. the democrats have some pretty good gains we were seen a five to eight or ten. eleven. it looks like it's can be the lower end of that. i think right after that cavanaugh supreme court fight. i was referring to as a color enhancement event. it didn't really change a whole lot of people from one

side to the other. it did do a lot of motivating. and given that the democrats were already incredibly motivated going and it didn't benefit democrats so much in the suburbs. where republicans gained enormously in the states where they and the red state, and i think the president's his focus, on the wall and the caravan. on cavanaugh. i do get made a real difference in a couple of u.s. u.s. senate races out there. and it didn't do anything to help them or did very little to help them if it did anything at all. they helped them on the u.s. senate level.

be really careful about what you say and write about turnout. there are whole lot of votes that have not been counted yet. we don't know anything. anybody that writes off of election night about turn out there just making stuff up. you can't really know anything the soon about it. we could look at the exit polls. it doesn't look like it went out much. i have this snorkel he said. a midterm record number number

of people voting. it was a really low bar. they did have some disappointments here. there had been point where they thought it would go north of 40. were north of 45. there was a chance of that. i don't think it was ever likely. if you let me get away with this it would be like 20 to 45. it looks like it's can be

right in the middle of that. it was always pre- cavanaugh. it was never better than one in three that they could get a majority in the senate. .. .. nobody can ever prove me wrong but i'm convinced the word

deplorable cost a half-million votes somewhere along the way you could blame our campaign for making mistakes and they certainly made some and democrats can blame jim called me and the fbi. they can blame the russians, but all of that is so easy, so convenient to blame these things that rather than may be the parties got some problems and maybe yes america is changing. it is changing. it will continue to change. absolutely. but maybe i hadn't changed at quite the pace they thought it was and may be triggered a little bit of a backlash out there appeared where democrats have to think about the consequences from an economic consequences of things that they push. whether you look at the clinton

administration and trade and think okay, maybe you folks believe free trade is the right way to go when nafta was a good thing to do an all back, that is all fine and good. you would have a really hard time making the case that democrats did announce to mitigate the job losses to a lot of people that were hurt economically by trade. granted a lot of job losses out there that are being blamed on trade, a lot of it is actually technology robotics, that sort of thing. but there were people generally heard in manufacturing areas by trade and i heard a statistic last week that there's only like 100,000 all currently in trade adjustment job retraining programs. 100,000 for the whole country. that's like a drop in the bucket. conversely for the obama administration, and maybe their

environmental agenda is very well have been the right thing to do, but did they do anything to mitigate the people that were going to be economically hurt. like if you were in the coal sector or whatever, did they do that? democrats are having enormous problems with working class white voters which were the new deal coalition and now that is called part of the republican base. i think they ought to look in the mirror and say what did we do to lose these people are what can we do to keep from losing more of them? they ought to really be thinking about that. there are some things that i know and it's important to remember that midterm elections have no predictive value

whatsoever in terms of what's going to happen two years later. just think about something democrats got 1994 bill clinton and then he was it two years later or president obama's problems with 2010 and he got it with mitt romney two years later. there just isn't predictive value. but what is worth lucky not is to think what were the states that caused democrats so much -- so many problems in 2016 and is there anything you could look at what happened here. so michigan, republicans gained -- excuse me, democrats gained the governorship in a one miss senate seat with debbie sabado very, very easily. whatever problem democrats may have had in michigan in 2016 and

maybe it was more of a clinton specific robin anyway. whatever it was, it clearly didn't work against democrats as much this time as it did last time. or ohio, where you had sherrod brown winning easily in the u.s. senate and democrats coming ever so close to winning the governorship they are. wisconsin winning a senate seat, tammy baldwin in wisconsin and beating scott walker peered with walker, i have a theory that god didn't intend governors to serve more than two terms. and there's a reason why a lot of states don't allow it because it is unnatural. andrew cuomo was able to do it and got away with it, but hey its new york state. hard for a democrat to lose

there. but whatever was the problem in wisconsin that led to republicans winning wisconsin by seven tenths of a point come again same thing. or pennsylvania winning the governorship, holding onto the governorship easily in a senate seat very, very easily. and then you think of florida coming up short in both the senate and governors races, but very competitively. obama carried it by one point. tram carried it by 1.2 percentage points in both these races were really close and i mentioned ohio. what i meant was that was one would normally it's a purple state in presidential elections, the democrats just aren't even close. six, seven points something like that democrats lost in 2016, but here they ran pretty well here.

those are some things that are worth looking at here. i do think the presidential election, the campaign starts today. they're going to be people jumping in immediately and i think it's going to be a field that will be roughly the same size as the republican field was back in 2016. but it will have some interesting dynamics to it that what we are going to see, we will see things we've never had before. for example we have african-americans run for democratic nomination before. iraq obama won successfully twice. but to have two, three, four well-funded, well-organized very prominent african-americans running by kemal harris, corey booker, possibly eric holder,

duval patrick. that is a new and different dynamic here. i think it is a mistake to think of the democratic nomination fight like ncaa basketball brackets, and that it's not that ample and that's not the way it is. but it's a way to structure thinking and we've had women run for democratic nominations before, but we are going to have two, three, four in addition to elizabeth warren almost certainly going to run and possibly amy klobuchar and kirsten sheila brand and kemal harris who i mentioned two, three, and four women running. i don't think we've had a strong latino candidate for democratic nomination before but we are going to have eric or city, mayor of los angeles as well as

the former hud secretary. that would be an interesting dynamic. democrats have actually done pretty well in the past with current or governors. we'll have a ton of mayors running besides garcetti, besides castro, john hicken looper. we are going to have big group of those sonatas sort of the folks that will be getting in. does joe biden jump in or not? does john kerry, i saw him in something a month ago and he was certainly not closing the door. what about bernie sanders? sure, why not. it has never been a priority -- be an effective member of congress is never a priority. had a rabbit c-span was doing this i probably wouldn't have

said that. [laughter] sleep deprivation. and so, mike bloomberg who spent what was the total $100 million everything that bloomberg has done on environmental issues that the democratic base likes, would undo the connection to wall street and maybe some of the criminal justice practices that have fallen out of favor that he pursued that n.y.p.d. pursued when he was mayor and assorted the age thing and he at one point was republican. can it undo all that? we'll have to wait and see. we are going to have a big, complex, boisterous democratic primary. people are talking about, well,

democrats another message in 2018. yeah, they did. they were running against president trump. that was the message. why get in the way something like that. 20 twentieths when democrats need to have a message coming together and wear something like that will be really, really important. so take all that together and you know, this is going to be like a barrel of monkeys. it's going to be a lot of fun to watch. things like income tax returns and subpoenas in all interesting things over there, you know, president trump i think he can brag that he did make a positive difference for republicans in the senate. but i think there's some former republican members of the house who might not be former republican members of the president then a little tamer, a little more subdued than some of

his rhetoric. so why don't i stop at this point and it got microphones here and here. i don't know if there is a third one over there. anyone that's got a question. i do not have the latest figures on any percentages were numbers on individual races. you guys have your phones and ipads and things next to you can take care of that. yes, sir. >> thank you for doing this charlie is always pretty talked about the prospect of gridlock in washington looking to states for policy action. it looks like from the conversation policy has been having a signals from the white house there might be a few areas where lisa housed in the white house would have an incentive to cooperate on infrastructure, prescription drug pricing could

the senate seems to be the place where mcconnell wants to confirm judges and not too much else. if the white house and the house and senate to get together and cooperate on big issues, could they jam it through the senate and get something done? >> on paper first of all you're making a great point. on paper it seems possible what you're describing may happen. the president trump has some fine match or be with that sticking to a script, staying on message, staying focused and negotiating policy. i give you that. they are not among his strongest suit. so, every time he rolls a grenade down the aisle, it undoes potential for some of these where there are opportunities. to be perfectly honest if i were

in the first thing i would done last year would have been infrastructure. do some things that are unifying. ring people together. you know, so can he say this a planned on not? history suggests that as a challenge, that may be. maybe. i am a little scared to call this will happen. thinking about president george w. bush, you don't become president under circumstances much worse than he did. you lose the popular vote. you win in florida, it goes all the way up to 5-4 supreme court

decision. and there was so much bitterness coming out of florida. but at the same time, he was able to do something with that and work with senator kennedy on education and able to do some things. people forget that his first job approval rating after taking office was 56%. clearly people didn't vote for him were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. the politicians about addition, not subtraction. and that is why it's been so perplexing to watch president trump do is doubling down strategy to the extent that he has and not try to expand 46% that voted for him, not to push that number up because there are no guarantees there is going to be a jill stein type green party

candidate for the kind of support she did that not all that came out of hillary clinton, but probably a pretty fair share of it. 46% may not be able to get 302 or whatever number of electoral votes that he can't. do what you're suggesting that i'm going to be from missouri on this one. he's going to have to show me that he's willing to stay harness. yes, sir. right here. >> you mentioned midterms are not a predictor of what happens and it sounded like dallas for the u.s. as a whole. other signals would see at the county or congressional or state level comparing made turned to the previous presidential performance that has any meaning

going forward to the next one? we see reversals in counties that trump flipped, for example if they start moving the other way does not have any meaning or that's just how it is? >> that's a really, really good question and i suspect before you get home tonight there will be some national journal presentations people will be working on tracking that data bound and building slides on it. that is kind of what i was getting at here when i was getting not talking about wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania and some of these places that send this presidential election into a very, very different place than we expected. normally, you know, to .1% popular vote win is not to get 270 electoral votes.

you know, to have the biggest diversions between the popular vote and electoral college in 140 years since 1876. we'll remember fondly when samuel tilden won the popular vote by three percentage points and rutherford b. hayes won the electoral college by a vote although i think there were some contestant things in there. i think looking on the individual state or county level is a legit way of looking at it. particularly with this been a split decision, do you make that based on the how around the senate. the president's approval ratings going into last week, there were some 40s and 41, but there were some 46 and seven.

that is actually a fairly wide span. usually if you're down below 46%, the average is in the house and senate seat in the senate that normally don't have the snap to deal with. but i think your point is well taken and i'm fairly confident the presentation center people will be working on not then i can steal from them. anymore questions, comments, accusations? you guys have never been shy before. here we go. >> a quick question. what are your thoughts on house leadership? pelosi, i just saw challenging clyburn for with. any thoughts? >> yeah, i know. i know specifically who is

watching. [laughter] the conventional wisdom was that a lower the number come assuming democrats got a majority that the lower the majority the tougher it would be for her that she would just not have a lot of cushion in terms of getting 218 votes. but that if she won, you know, if they won 45, 50, 55, 60. it was never going to happen, but a big number, the conventional wisdom is that would give a cushion that she could drop some people and still be in a position to get 218 on the floor vote given the numbers that have said publicly or privately that they won't support her. but there was -- there is a contra argument there and this is overly simplistic. there were 25 republicans need

in districts that clinton carried. roughly speaking the gains democrats would have would be mostly in hillary clinton districts were nancy pelosi would probably not be terribly problematic in a lot of those folks might not have been backed into making a promise are anxious to make a promise that they would never support her. but that anything north of that, bigger than that would give me new incoming democrats coming in in districts that president trump one in 2016, where nancy pelosi would be somewhat more problematic. i think i'm going to go with the conventional wisdom of the lower number. simply it up with dirty five, six, seven, something like that, that is kind of in the middle.

i guess if i had to put a number on it and i realize this a fools errand, but i've been accused of being a full before. 60% chance, maybe a touch above the she wins. but you know, when democrats meet, and i went to a catholic university, but i'm not catholic, or you're waiting waiting for the pope to be named in the puffs of smoke coming out of the chimney. there are all kinds of names of people that are mentioned that if push comes to shove, democrats may turn to. when i ask people around, you know, you hear adam schiff signal coming -- all kinds of

people. obviously corrine clyburn overhearing you got a big mix of old. i tend to think if nancy pelosi gets pushed out but it will be generational change and whoever they give will be, you know, i'm the younger side of 60, 65, maybe even 55. you know, i think that there is still some doubt they are. i noticed last night i couldn't hear it, because i was in front of the computer but they have a monitor up and i saw nancy pelosi and steny hoyer and jim clyburn up on the stage at the dccc the third party and she was positively euphoric in steny hoyer, who i like a lot looked like he was at a funeral.

i mean, i'm not that wasn't happy, really happy about democrats picking up a bunch as deep he had been in a lot of those districts and worked very hard, but you know, i'm not sure he enjoyed her taking of it. lap like that. we'll have to kind of wait and see. yes, sir, did you have one? >> estimate thank you for taking my question. one of the cornerstones of our democracy is the faith and trust we have in the process. use the words that boil down to ask down to access security for suppression. wondering if you have any thoughts about the short-term and long-term effects that things like secretary of state they'll begin in florida were an election official was really cast in the spotlight. now we see it in kansas. we see it in georgia. we see it in new hampshire on both sides of the aisle of which money is starting to work its way into those in the managing process that i was hoping you could share some thoughts about

the affect he thought that has. >> those are some good questions and let me attack it from a different way for several different ways i should say. you know, we've had secretaries of state running for governor, for senate. i don't ever remember it being as contentious as georgia and kansas were this time. maybe that's just says something about the hyper partisanship and increased acrimony in our process that a fairly previously innocuous position suddenly become so highly charged that his new. one thing republicans did over the last decade that was very smart is the republican party and that's a boatload of money in state elections over the last

decade and win both state legislative, but attorney general, secretary of state racism they invested a heckuva lot and they've done extremely well in those races. what is interesting on the train on the way to new york, we've been going back and forth the last few days, yesterday afternoon i was looking and i couldn't quickly find a partisan break down a secretaries of state. you could find that very easily. it has never been really considered whether partisanship was that important. i personally would prefer that we have some careerist or nonpartisan, nonpolitical people administering elections. the other thing to your broader

point, we spend very, very little money. on campaign we don't spend a lot of money on elections. i am just making this up most spend a heckuva lot more money on food in the county jail than they do on elections. we are not paying for precision. we are not spending enough money for precision. we are just spending enough to get kind of close. if you want precision, you've got to pay a heckuva lot more than we do and it would probably help not to be using temporary off in other people using the technology, you know, that is a

disaster. who am i to talk. but i ago -- i guess i worry some about the security of our election in the process, but i worry even more about the lack of confidence people have. we saw some articles the last few days about people who think my vote doesn't matter. people say i don't even know if it's going to get counted. you go wow, that's pretty self-defeating. that's a terrible, terrible attitude. i do think we need to take elections administration more seriously.

and i do think i personally, now granted you need to consider the source. i'm from louisiana, the original good government state. i think there's very little little voter fraud in this country. very, very little. at the same time i know a lot of conservatives and republicans better convince voter fraud is rampant. i'm a little more skeptical about that, but that's okay. there isn't a lot of confidence either side that we need to address. anybody else? right here. [inaudible] my question with ohio, usually when you have a statewide election like florida, governor senate he see them look like it's trending.

ohio you had sherrod brown who clearly ran away with it, do you have any insight or anything given as you mentioned being a purple state, swing state, is there anything more you can share with us i'm not? >> you can sort of state rules and start finding exceptions to the rule. we are seeing less ticket splitting than we've ever seen before. we are seeing more people that are just going straight down the line. eat a republican, democrat or just staying home than we ever saw before. there was a great statistic the pew research people came up with since 23rd team there's been something like 73 u.s. senate elections before yesterday and 69 out of 73 were won by the same party that carried that

state in the most recent presidential and in 2016 every single u.s. senate race went exactly the same way it was going that night in the presidential. so we are seeing a lot less ticket splitting, but we are still seeing him in the gap between sharad rounds victory -- share it brown victory. that was a gap that was there and we saw, texas, governor abbott, i don't know what his margin ended up being, 15, 18. it was a big, big margin. and then ted cruz was very close. you had all kinds of strange things going on in texas. strange other than what ted cruz raised. republican attorney general under indictment since "moby

dick" was a copy. then you've got a state agriculture commissioner that somehow offended all the barbecue joint owners with some kind of omissions thing. perplexed me because that smells good. why would you want to restrict that it is not sacred and apparently the land commissioner bush offended the daughters of the alamo for something worth of sacred site in texas on something or other that i don't understand and that was kind of pressing him down a little bit. you had all kinds of things going on that caused a big gap. the general rule is still there but there is plus ticket splitting than we've seen in a long, long time.

but there absolutely are examples of the. brown's race just never was close. it just never was. ohio and pennsylvania senate races, and sherrod brown in bob casey, those were -- those republican challengers are kind of the dogs that didn't bark. they just sort of never got completely engaged. but i think the general trend towards less ticket splitting is absolutely there. yes. >> i saw you at something the other day, didn't i.? [inaudible] [laughter] >> be careful. my wife is sitting right back there. >> some people have mentioned the changing nature of the republican party be more and more trump the end. do you think there will be any

impacts of -- [inaudible] >> senator of utah. romney. senator romney of republican, does he have any impact at all in the senate? >> well, i think senator elect romney is a very, very bright talented, mature and i think he'll be very much a worthy addition to the u.s. senate. i would not hold -- i wouldn't expect him to become a thorn in the side of president trump because number one, that is kind of not as personal style. but number two, you know, think about senator flake in his book. you know, his book that was so critical of president trump ended up being the political

equivalent of 1626 page suicide note. you know, where i don't think, but i don't think he could've won the republican primary when all was said and done. bob corker didn't even write a book, but his criticism of president trump made him where he would have had a difficult time beating marshall bought her a happy double back and run for his seat again. they're just very little tolerance for dissent within the republican party right now. they would have to have been, you know, if republicans had lost 50 seats in the house and lost two senate seats and control the senate, that might've changed things, but that didn't happen. so i wouldn't count on that. i do think we are seeing signs of a realignment taking place in this country.

it is going both directions and we are seeing a lot of high income, well-educated people that are moving from within the republican party more towards democrats because of their pro-choice, pro environment, anti-gun, they don't like president trump. you know, it's pushing them over this direction towards democrats. at the same time, you've got these working-class white, once a reliable part of the democratic coalition that are moving equally fast over towards the republican party and they tend to like president trump. there is a liberal element there in a string element, but a lot of pretty conservative, particularly socially, culturally moving over that way

so that we are seeing -- i don't know what the republican party is going to look like in 2021 or 2025 once president trump is gone. i don't think it will go back and look the way it used to look, but it is clearly, you know i'm a wee season changes there. on the other end of these people moving towards the democratic party, and two democrats present a face and open arms and a nominee who would be a good receiver for some of these people are not. i do think that one of the things, you know, for democrat, you know, most democrats and liberals i know, to them the most horrible thing in the entire planet that could have

been in 2020 would be president trump it's really good. well, you know, think about when you go to an investment advisor, and what are your object is. with the other thing. what's your risk tolerance and i think that's a real important question for democrats to look and examine, what is their risk tolerance of having something that they really don't want happening and at the same time, elect ability is not a major concern of people when they're deciding who to support for their party's presidential nomination. that's a credit check. his asking about this last summer. he said that is right, but what about unelect debility. in other words, if you're a democrat and you say i really like so and so, but i'm not sure

he or she can win and be willing to look at their second or third choice because it might be someone that would be less unelectable if you will. there is not happening. at the same time someone coming from the left can fire up the enthusiasm and we saw enthusiasm for democrats yes came up close -- they came up short in florida, georgia, texas, statewide. but you know what, they sure beat the point spread. they beat what was expected of them several months earlier. so you know, it's not quite as obvious as it first sounds. >> i'm not stalking you, but we did visit earlier this week.

we talked earlier this week about the way it took something of a beating in 2016. 24, 30 hours later, how do you feel based on the outcome about the performance of your trade in your peers? do you feel is though some of the integrity or the has been restored based on the outcome of the last 24 hours? >> that's a great question in the polls hold up reasonably well this year. but, you know, for the folks that haven't had this conversation went, if we were talking five years ago, what i would've said and i'm not a pollster now, but it was earlier in my life and i was sort of a professional can number of polls now. the finest pollsters in the country, incredibly bright rigorous people with a lot of

intelligence in both parties, they are not as accurate as they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. telemarketers have basically messed it up for everybody and probably here for the direct marketing association now. actually i think they changed their name. but anyway, the caller i.d., voice mail, all of these things have made it very, very hard to get a representative sample. the telephone interviewing is not perfect yet, but at the same time, we are not there yet completely with online and so we are at this point where the old way is in as good as it used to be, but the new weight isn't quite ready yet and i actually got into the business during the previous transition point with a transition in the late 70s

from first all interviews, where they would knock on your door and interview on the doorstep. that was the way it was back in the 60s and into the late 70s he then in very early 80s. to telephone after that. so, there are some systemic problems in the business, but i have to say that the pollsters, the professional pollsters in both sides, most of them are really pretty good. they are very good actually. if you look at the track record in special elections this year that they did, their numbers were pretty much spot on. in the national polls, they did in 2016 they were not that much. some of you heard me say this before that the real clear politics average, nbc "wall

street journal" is one of my personal favorite at four popular vote, which is what they measured to .1. the average was off nine tenths of a point. that's about as accurate as you're going to get them pulling. these are high quality surveys that are generally pretty good and fared well this during my dad. what is spotty as the state polling. even in 2016 in the way the polls indicated. it was the effort poll failure was wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. this year the pollsters still

little bit better. i think we have to be more discerning particularly on the state level about pulling in being a little bit more discriminating in what we look at n.a.b. -- the fact is a lot of people will say cell phones. good pollsters are calling cell phones. roughly half of their samples are going to cell phones. that is actually not as big of a problem. the problem is the caller i.d. and voicemail. >> hi, charlie. wonder if i can keep you on the topic of exit polls in particular. wondering what you are thinking in the information came out around 6:00 last night. i was looking at gop approval numbers underwater, country on the wrong track in thinking this might bode well for democrats tonight. do you think that played out or just your views on the exit

polls? >> to me, the most important value of exit polls is for speech material after the elections are over. there is considerable research that the exit polls were off with a fair amount back in 2016 and we'll see how they did, how they did this time. the thing about it is people forget, exit polls, they've been abused a little bit. exit polls were never designed and what would happen been a mistake. exit polls were designed to give her a flavor for your college degrees and this not in what is

going on goes into projections, but only in races that aren't even close. are the integral part of the projections that the networks do. i have -- i will confess i kind of deliberately didn't show up until about 6:00 last night at nbc because first of all was gone with the sequestering of the numbers, but the thing is i don't think -- if the race is so close, the senate race or governors races so close so close that you can figure out from last week's "time" magazine who's going to win, and exit poll is not of a whole lot of

value telling you what it is. they are not that accurate. to war stories you might find interesting. 1992 i was a consultant to cbs and they had a handful of polls there is another's and political scientist that were consulting various teams. at lunchtime we were in a conference room having lunch with the banker then, dan rather. it was a little after 1:00 in the first round of exit polls come in. all of us had expected it was governor clinton was challenging president george h.w. bush. all of us expected clinton would win, but it was a competitive race, but that it sure seemed like clinton had in the vintage. the early exit polls started coming in that showed clinton with a massive lead over

president trump. excuse me, over president bush. that just didn't reflect that all the race we have been watching so closely. so we were busy scrambling around, trying to concoct in her mind a rationale, and next donation for why it seemed to be taking this completely unexpected turn peered over the course of the afternoon as more data came in, more exit polls came in and started closing down to the point where it ended up being about where we expect it'd to be to begin with, but they were incredibly misleading. and then you remember the experience with john kerry and president george h.w. bush in 2004. based on the 92 experience, i actually made arrangements to have lunch with a friend over in

connecticut because i didn't want to get consumed by the polls that i didn't hunt an enormous amount of respect for in this context. everybody got out sort of. and it turned out they were just flat wrong. they've been abused a good read, but it shows some subsequent research using another method of showing they are not capturing the very best, most accurate picture of what happened on election day. but for the purposes of saying, what did various demographic groups do, it's okay, it's not bad here it is not the be-all and end-all which is why we have other research up there. i think they've been overused or misused, abused and away they

shouldn't have been. so i think they should be taken with a little bit of a grain of salt. having said that, at the cross paths, both horizontal and vertical tabs for speech material after i caught up with them sleep. you have to be a little careful. i want to thank you offered the national journal members in your support helps us do what we are doing and i'm proud of being associated with national journal for 20 years and for any of you who aren't national journal members, i'm sure someone can help you get there. anyway, thank you all for coming out. [applause] >> thank you all for joining us this afternoon.

you will receive an event e-mail recap in a couple days. it also will have an assessment in it. with the deer feed back on how we can improve in the future and be more valuable to you. i also would like to invite you to join us at a reception we are having this afternoon. thank you and have a good afternoon. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

>> diet.about the president even before i even before i begin the book and it occurred to me there might be something all the presidents have in common, not that they were forgotten but there were significant in some way. >> i think that bill clinton did a lot to mayor his own impeachment. i think that he knew members of congress were looking for him to

make mistakes and when he made those mistakes and later testified under oath in a way that was false or what she was later held in contempt by a judge for perjury. bill clinton made his impeachment almost inevitable. >> in texas, republican senator ted cruz nearly defeated challenger beto o'rourke them what appeared to be one of the closest u.s. senate races in decades. your last nights but drink concession speeches beginning with beto o'rourke. [cheers and applause] >> thank yll